


A Mile In Your Shoes

by arby



Category: The Office (US)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-16
Updated: 2007-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-03 06:43:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arby/pseuds/arby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Pam was thinking at the end of <i>Phyllis's Wedding</i>, and what happened after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mile In Your Shoes

Pam watched as Jim danced with that girl, a full head taller than she – they looked like they were in junior high, for Chrissakes. That was uncharitable of her, she knew, but she really wasn’t in the mood to throw Karen any more rope. Already it inexplicably looked like she wasn’t going to hang herself with it. Pam felt the leaden weight of hopelessness settling in her stomach, and stared at Jim morosely, willing him to stop this nonsense and get with the program already.

She knew she was getting way too intense, inappropriately so, even, but she couldn’t help it. _I can’t pretend I don’t care anymore. I can’t go back to the way things used to be._ (Resolutely ignoring the small, still voice saying, _sound familiar?_) The couple had rotated so that Jim was facing towards her, and he glanced over to where she sat. She had sort of left her stare on him as she thought, and she came to herself in time to catch the tail end of his reaction. He looked startled, almost shocked, and a slight flush came to his cheeks. Pam felt sick. Her heart beat wildly in her throat like a startled bird. She looked away, but the damage had been done. Suddenly she hated herself for being so pathetic. She couldn’t just sit there, mooning after him like some kind of loser – _like the way he used to do after you?_ This time the voice in her head was stronger, but no less matter-of-fact. She was so busy mulling over the repercussions of that thought that she almost didn’t notice when someone sat down next to her.

_Roy._

He was looking pretty good, actually – though he seemed to have done something different with himself since they split, it was still yesterday’s fish wrapped in today’s newspaper – but she eyed him with indifference.

He was looking at her like she was the last drop of water in a desert. A selfish part of her reveled in that look, in that feeling of being so _wanted_. _Jim used to look at me that way, like he couldn’t get enough of me._ So when Roy started with the small talk, she let him go on, and when he asked her to dance it was a relief, that someone was doing something, even if it was the wrong person at the right time. She made him take her outside where no one would see them, like he was her secret shame.

He was comfortable as a cast-off old pair of slippers, and he didn’t talk, which allowed her to go on thinking about Jim, the sore tooth she couldn’t help pressing. She replayed the conversation by the bar, taking it apart, looking for clues that Jim was still into her. Maddeningly, she couldn’t really find any. She’d been the one who was flirting, he’d merely smiled and answered with a hint of his old teasing. There’d been a ghostly remnant of affection there, that was all. She wanted to hit something, but not being a man that was impossible, so instead she let Roy kiss her. It meant nothing, she felt nothing; there was a dried-out husk where her heart should be. Jim was with Karen now – Pam had spurned him, changed her mind but waited too long for any self-respecting man to come crawling back. She didn’t blame him in the slightest, that was the worst part – when she looked back at it now, she could see how he’d had no choice. The lurking sickness in her gut rose until it became a hand, beating at her mouth to get out. She broke away from Roy and puked in the parking lot, wrenching, awful; a punishment she knew she deserved. Roy knelt beside her and held her hair, for which she was grateful and resentfully ashamed at the same time.

Finally it was over. Grimly she wiped her mouth and said to Roy without looking at him, “Can you give me a ride home?”

“Sure,” he replied, quiet – humbled, for once. The truck echoed with his self-conscious silence – of all he’d left unsaid, of whatever it was he thought he could do to win her back. She didn’t feel the need to lighten that load for him in the slightest. She was who she was, and he didn’t really get her at all, had never gotten her, really. Her throat ached as if in premonition of the sobs she’d be choking back as soon as she was alone. Her mouth tasted as sour and horrible as you’d expect. It was weird; she wasn’t even that drunk.

Soon they were at her front door. Getting out of the truck, she ignored Roy’s longing looks and said, “Thanks.” She left it at that. Already she’d given him too much hope by letting him kiss her, in a moment of weakness. _Be strong, Beesley,_ she thought to herself and half-laughed derisively at the Jim-voice in her head. _Shut it, Halpert._ But even a phantom Jim was better than the real Roy, so she waved at the latter and turned to unlock her front door, the gateway to her Fancy New Life, alone and yet not-quite-lonely. Put it this way – she wasn’t holding her breath for one of Ryan’s BS friends to ride up in a shining white Mercedes and rescue her. A lame old Corolla would do just fine, with the right driver. She had a sudden morbid vision of herself as Miss Havisham – Miss HavishPam, Michael would have said, as if he would even get the reference – moldering away waiting for the wedding that passed her by years ago, still clutching her frost-limed bouquet, in a room doilied up with spidersilk cobwebs, shuttered tight against life and light, and Pam shuddered, wondering how long she could afford to wait.


End file.
